


see the beach from here

by dankomanuel (somethingradiates)



Category: Rhett & Link
Genre: AU, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Really AU, Reunion, handjobs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-01
Updated: 2017-03-01
Packaged: 2018-09-27 17:42:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10036646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somethingradiates/pseuds/dankomanuel
Summary: (Stevie gave him a rainbow pin as a kind-of joke, way back after he’d first told her - about everything, the divorce and all, after he’d cried to her like a goddamn kid because she and Jen were the only people that wouldget itand she’d saidwe know, Rhett, we knew, it’s okay, you know this doesn’t change anything for us.It’s on the top of his dresser.  He’s never gonna wear it, but he’s never gonna get rid of it, either.)a gmm-never-happened au set eight years after link left for college and rhett stayed.





	

**Author's Note:**

> to elaborate slightly on the summary: weird timeline with no relation to actual gmm & fucky, inaccurate history. 
> 
> also uhh there's more nc17 at the end than i intended. of course i get unnecessarily wordy when it comes to that part of the story. my b
> 
> also sorry for playing pair the spare but i felt real weird incorporation cassie into this bc she is not a Public Figure so... jen/stevie it is
> 
> also of course the first thing i write for this fandom is......... whatever the fuck this is... cool

* * *

“Hey.”

Jessie’s voice is fuzzy with sleep and Rhett glances reflexively at the time. It’s earlier than he thought, just after seven.

“Hey. Uh - didn’t mean to wake you up. Did I wake you up?”

(Once upon a time, it had been charming when he stumbled over himself when he talked to her, back when they filled each other’s bellies with butterflies. But that had been a damn long time ago, he figures.)

“No,” she says, and probably knows that he knows it’s a lie. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah. ‘Course. I just thought - you know, maybe I could talk to this boys before y’all go to church, but they probably ain’t up yet, huh?”

Jessie sighs, does the thing she does where she holds the phone away a little bit so it isn’t so obvious. She used to do it on the phone with her mama. “Huh-uh,” she says. “They’ll - I’ll see if they wanna call you after breakfast, okay?” A few months ago, it would’ve been _they’ll call after breakfast,_ but the therapists both said the boys needed the ability to opt out if they didn’t want to call him, that having the obligation was making things harder. _It’s normal,_ Jessie had told him, and the gentleness in her voice had made him feel ten times worse than if she’d reminded him that he made the choice to leave.

“Okay,” he says, and adds, quick, “if they don’t - you know. It’s alright. Still on for Wednesday?”

“Yeah.” Jessie yawns, and Rhett has to bite his tongue to not say _sure sounds like you were already awake,_ because that familiarity isn’t his to address anymore. He isn’t that guy, they aren’t those people, doesn’t matter how long he was and they were. “They wanna go see your mama this weekend. They asked me last night.”

“Oh,” he says, a little wrongfooted. “Good. Mom’ll be - that’ll make her real happy.”

“I’ll talk to them today,” she says after a moment, “text me, let me know what your mama says. We’ll figure something out.”

“Sure,” he says, knows as he does that he sounds too eager, hates himself just a little for it. “Thanks, Jessie,” and then, before he can help himself, “go back to sleep, huh?”

She’s quiet for a moment. “I’ll talk to you later, Rhett,” she says, and before he can say goodbye, there’s a _click_ and dead air.

* * *

It’s a twenty minute drive out to the worksite and he spends all of it with the window down, listening to the bales in the back of the truck jostle when he hits an empty spot in the road. The only station comes in lately has been the Christian one from a couple towns over and he’s never been partial to it but as of late it makes him shut the damn thing off altogether after a minute or two. He doesn’t like driving without music - it used to drive Jessie crazy - but he’ll take it over the alternative this morning.

He’s the second or third out, parks in between two big square-bodies that he doesn’t recognize. Young guys, he thinks, probably high schoolers trying to earn money for football gear or a lift kit, and he’s not wrong; there’s four of them, all clutching energy drinks and wearing t-shirts saying shit like _Ditch the Bitch, Let’s Go Muddin’_ with the sleeves cut off. He can remember being young and stupid but never that young or that stupid.

“Are you Rhett?” one of them says, once he gets close enough. “Foreman said to tell you you’re in charge ‘til he gets here. And that we oughta start without him.”

Rhett glances at the work trailer set back off the road, takes a second to notice the chain over the door. He’s been working for Harlan Hill for six months - construction once in a while, laying fence for the last couple months as the ground got dry enough - and he’s never known him to keep cash in the work trailer, but whatever’s stashed in there is none of his business. There’s no tire tracks up to the trailer through the grass, either, so he hasn’t been out at all today. Means he probably won’t be, which means pay will wait until tomorrow. Lord.

“Yeah,” Rhett says, instead of any of that. “Alright. Any of you ever used a post-hole digger before?”

* * *

He’s got a text from Stevie when he gets back to the truck. It’s close to six and the sun’s still up, but if he’d have kept the high school boys any longer they’d have probably left him out in fuckall with a set of post-hole diggers and a bale of barbed wire (they say it like his mama, _bobwire_ ), so he’d averted the mutiny and called it a day early.

The text says to call her, so he does, and he’s preparing to text back _answer your phone!!!_ when she picks up on the fifth ring with “Hi, finally, good God.”

“Yeah, hi,” Rhett says, and grins despite himself. “What’s goin’ on?”

“Jen wants to go out tonight,” she says. “Do you wanna come?”

“It’s Sunday. Find Jesus, girl.”

“Yeah, aren’t you supposed to not work on Sundays or something? I’m assuming that’s why you didn’t call me. You were off being rugged and manly in the woods.”

“It was a pasture,” Rhett says, “but point taken. What’s she got in mind?”

“Some bar,” Stevie says, and there’s something evasive in her voice that makes Rhett narrow his eyes at his steering wheel. He’s got the air on low, trying to cool the sweat a little before he heads out.

“Some bar,” he repeats. “Is it the same bar you took me to last time?”

“No,” she says immediately. “No, we are never going back to Motherlode with you, Rhett, you - I promise _one hundred percent._ ”

“It wasn’t that bad,” he says, but it comes out defensive and a little mumbly, like he’s eight years old and telling his mama that he don’t know what happened to his bike, he just got on and the frame was all bent like that.

“It absolutely was that bad,” Stevie says. “You know how sometimes when you’re teaching kids to swim you just, like, throw them in the deep in and prepare yourself to jump in when they start drowning? You started drowning literally as soon as we stepped inside.”

“Yeah,” Rhett says. “ _I know._ ”

“So this is our version of walking into the shallow end with you. With both of us holding your hands, and arm floaties. And a snorkel.”

“I don’t need a snorkel.”

“Okay,” Stevie says, a little placatingly. “Well. It’s an actual bar instead of a club this time, so we can just - you know, sit down and have a couple drinks. And you can observe your people in their natural habitat.”

“Good Lord,” Rhett says, and somehow ends up agreeing to meet them in Raleigh three sentences later. _It’ll be fun,_ Stevie says, right before she ends the call. _Promise._

* * *

Rhett strips on his way to the shower, leaves a trail of muddy clothes from the front hallway to the bathroom door, doesn’t look at himself in the mirror when he washes his face while the shower’s heating up. A twinge of pain starts deep between his shoulders and snakes all the way down his back, makes him stand under the spray with his head hanging for a minute or two before he can make himself reach for the soap.

He about calls Stevie to ask what he’s supposed to wear, once he’s out, and ends up settling on grey chinos and a t-shirt, thinking a little meanly that she told him it was a _bar_ and if he ends up underdressed it probably ain’t the kind of bar he wants to be in anyway. Jen’d told him to keep the beard, the first time they went out; he hadn’t ever planned on getting rid of it, but he does trim a little, newspaper spread over the sink to catch it.

He does have to look in the mirror, then, and stares for a minute after he’s finished up. He looks tired. Stevie’s gonna tell him he looks tired. There are bruise-purple shadows under his eyes and his mouth’s set tight even when he’s just looking at himself. He looks like his daddy in a way he’s never looked before, and he doesn’t know if he likes that or not.

What the hell. He grabs the half-empty pack of Pall Malls off the table on his way out the door.

* * *

It’s a forty-five minute drive up to Raleigh and by the time he’s there he’s got two texts from Stevie: _i’m stoked_ and _i think this is gonna b really fun_. He finds parking - the address she gave him is close to a five-dollar-a-night lot, means he doesn’t have to find a garage - and says _we’ll see_ back, feels a little like a buzzkill before he reminds himself that she knows damn well that he ain’t used to this kind of thing. Never was, even when he and Jessie were together - she didn’t like bars, raised by teetotalers, and he had enough of drinking himself sick when he was seventeen to care much for them once he hit twenty-one.

They’re sitting at the back of the bar when he gets there, at one of the four-person booths, and Jen waves him over like he could miss her. Stevie wasn’t wrong - this is a bar, not a club, and that it’s Sunday night means that they’re close to the only people in it. It’s hard to tell, Rhett thinks, and looks around a little more; about the only sign is a rainbow sticker behind the bar.

(Stevie gave him a rainbow pin as a kind-of joke, way back after he’d first told her - about everything, the divorce and all, after he’d cried to her like a goddamn kid because she and Jen were the only people that would _get it_ and she’d said _we know, Rhett, we knew, it’s okay, you know this doesn’t change anything for us._ It’s on the top of his dresser. He’s never gonna wear it, but he’s never gonna get rid of it, either.)

He orders a drink, doesn’t make eye contact with the bartender, and once he’s got it he says “Well - I like it a hell of a lot more than the other place” before he sits down.

“Figured,” Jen says. She's from even farther away than Stevie, but something about her puts Rhett at ease - half the time he feels like Stevie's, best friend or not, about ready to fight him, even about little things. “It’s a little more _Rhett_.”

“Yeah,” he says, and downs about half his drink in one go. “So.”

“So,” Stevie says, and shifts a little.

“So,” Rhett repeats. “You had me drive up here. I’m figurin’ there’s a scheme, somewhere.”

“It’s not a scheme,” Jen says, right off the bat. “Just. There’s a guy I know that I think you’ll get along with, and he’s free tonight, and _you’re_ free tonight, in that you’re here with us, so.”

“You’re gonna like him,” Stevie says. “You have the same sense of humor. And he likes tall guys, and I think he’s from this area, so you might have friends in common or something.”

(Rhett doesn’t tell her that he and this guy absolutely have friends in common, since Stevie and Jen are essentially the only friends he’s got left. He doesn’t need to; she knows as well as he does. He never exactly posted fliers about it - _Local Man Abandons Family For Life of Sexual Depravity_ \- and Jessie ain’t the type to talk about it, but Buies Creek is small and the folks there have big mouths, and he hasn’t talked to his-and-Jessie’s friends since the divorce was finalized.)

“Yeah,” he says instead, and takes another drink, smaller, pacing himself a little. “Probably.”

“He was in the GSA at school,” Jen says, “that’s how we met - he’s funny as fuck, Rhett, you’re really gonna like him. He was an ad major, I think.”

Ten minutes later, he and Jen are deep in the weeds of a conversation about the greatest music rivalries - she thinks Axl Rose threatening to kick Kurt Cobain’s ass is somehow cooler than Ronnie Van Zant telling Neil Young to stay out of the south - when Stevie nudges Jen’s shoulder and says “oh - there he is.”

Rhett wants to glance over his shoulder but doesn’t, takes another drink, only looks up when Jen says “You finally cut your hair! Rhett, this is Link - Link, this is the guy I was talking to you about, Stevie’s friend.”

There’s something low thrumming deep in the bottom of his chest when Rhett takes him in - he’s wearing glasses, black-rimmed, stylish, and he never used to - he’s wildly different and exactly the same and for just a second Rhett’s ten, thirteen, seventeen and caught breathless, watching his best friend in the way boys weren’t supposed to watch other boys and _hating_ himself for it.

He doesn’t remember his brain telling his mouth to say _I gotta go_ but it does, doesn’t remember his brain telling his legs to get him the fuck out of here but they do, and he’s halfway down the street before he hears someone calling _Rhett!_ behind him.

He’s got to stop at the crosswalk, caught at the wrong part of traffic, and that’s when Link catches up to him, takes him by the shoulder like he used to when Rhett was being stubborn and not looking at him, and the familiarity of it hits Rhett like a boot to the gut. “Rhett,” Link says, and when Rhett finally looks at him he looks stricken. “Jen said you’re divorced. That you just came out - why wouldn’t you - “

It’s hitting him, Rhett thinks, and feels his own face heating, knows his shame is scrawled across it, has to turn back to the crossway lights like he hopes their red glow will cover it.

( _I can’t do this,_ he had said. They were eighteen, and Link had plans because Link always had plans - they could move to Durham, Rhett could apply for Pell grants and scholarships, and when they were established up there they could tell their folks back home, and even if his parents or Rhett’s mama lost it, they’d have each other, it’d be alright. _I can’t do this, I’m not - I don’t care if you’re gay, but I ain’t, Link, I can’t -_ )

“We ain’t talked for seven years,” Rhett says, and it feels like he’s pulling it out of himself with both hands, forcing the words out. “I didn’t. I wouldn’t figure you’d have much to say. I didn’t wanna listen to you tell me you told me so.” There’s a little glowing man on the screen across the street, beckoning him to walk, but he feels like he’s rooted to the spot.

“You can go to hell,” Link says, and the fierceness in his voice stuns Rhett into looking at him. “You think I’d - you can _go to hell,_ Rhett,” and then Link’s hugging him, both arms up around his neck (like before, Rhett thinks helplessly, that’s how Link always hugged him, even back before they knew), and Rhett can’t do anything but hug him back.

* * *

Link’s apartment is a five minute walk and Rhett ends up bypassing the truck completely. They don’t talk much on the way - Link says _what happened,_ and Rhett says he doesn’t want to talk about it on the sidewalk - but as soon as they’re inside Link says _Rhett, what happened_ and guides him to the couch like he’s in shock. Maybe he is.

“I couldn’t lie to her anymore,” he says after a minute, or maybe five minutes, or maybe an hour. He doesn’t know. Part of him is still stuck in that booth, taking in everything different and everything exactly, precisely the same. “I loved - love, I still love her, there’s no past tense, it just. I thought maybe I could.” He takes a breath and wishes it didn’t shudder. “I thought all that was a fluke. All that with you. And we had a couple kids, and I thought, you know, maybe it really was, but the longer it went on - “ He shrugs one big shoulder, takes the glass Link hands him and drinks without asking what it is. It’s water, cools the mouth he didn’t realize was dry. “So I told her.”

“God,” Link says softly. “Rhett, I’m sorry.”

Rhett shrugs again, closes his eyes for a second, and when he opens them again he’s still in Link’s apartment, Link’s still next to him. “It had to happen,” he says. “I wish it’d happened sooner. She didn’t deserve that.”

“No, she didn’t,” Link says, but there’s no reproach in his voice. “How’d your mama - ?”

“Still ain’t sure,” Rhett says after a few seconds. “Some days she’s alright with it. Some days she cries and talks about how I gotta go back to church, says I can get help.”

“Yeah,” Link says, and suddenly Rhett’s hit with it, just that one syllable. Stevie gets it, and Jen gets it, but Link - Link _gets it_ , more than either of them ever can, Link gets Buies Creek and his mama, and all Rhett can do is choke “I should never have stayed. I shoulda went with you.”

“Yeah,” Link says, and his voice is infinitely gentle. "You should've."

* * *

They talk.

Rhett hasn’t talked like this in years, he realizes somewhere around midnight. Link tells him about school, about his job editing videos in an office two streets over, a little about the long-term boyfriend he amicably ended things with last year, and Rhett tells him mostly about the boys and the goings-on at home, doesn’t say anything about what he’s been doing for work until Link asks him, and Link doesn’t say _you’re too smart for that_ but Rhett can see it in his face, hear it in his voice when he says _a job’s a job_.

There’s a silence, after that, but a comfortable one, and of course Rhett’s got to break it.

“I missed you,” he says. “I missed you so bad I didn’t know what to do with myself. You know that?”

Link pulls at a loose thread in the throw slung over the arm of the couch next to him. Rhett’s watching him, catches him worrying the inside of his bottom lip, and it strikes such a fondness in him that it takes him aback for a minute.

“I know,” Link says. “I had to try not to call you for the first three months I was up there. Every day. I’d pick up the phone and dial your number and just stand there with it, and then I’d eventually put it down.”

Rhett wants to say _I would’ve answered_. Wants to say, _if you’d have just called,_ or _if you had asked one more time -_

But he doesn’t. He can’t. “I’m sorry,” he says, and Link nods to the throw. Doesn’t say _you should be,_ but Rhett’s saying it to himself loud enough for the both of them, he figures.

* * *

It’s a half hour later that Rhett stands and stretches and mumbles _I oughta go._ He’s got work in the morning - not til ten, but he’d like to get in early, and there’s a heaviness in Link’s apartment that he’s not sure what to do with.

“Alright,” Link says, and gets up, too, takes their water glasses and his own beer bottle into the kitchen. Rhett watches him set the glasses careful in the sink, rinse the beer bottle out and set it on the counter, and then looks down quick when Link starts over to the door.

“It’s, uh,” Link starts. Rhett’s leaning to put on his boot. “It was good seeing you.”

Rhett straightens up some. He means to say _yeah,_ he thinks, but what ends up happening is that he opens his mouth and closes it again like a fish and then kisses Link on the mouth.

Link stiffens, just a little, and for a second all Rhett can think is _no, no, tell me I’m not wrong_ \- and then has one arm up around Rhett’s neck, pulling himself up. Link - he doesn’t kiss like a teenager anymore but there’s something sweet and eager and a little greedy about it like it was then, without the frantic edge. It’s good, it’s _good,_ and when it breaks Rhett’s breathless.

“Hey,” Link says, quiet, gets his attention again, and this time Link’s the one to start it, gets one hand in Rhett’s hair and kisses him like he means it; Rhett can feel the hard edge of Link’s teeth on his bottom lip and he’s not sure exactly when both his hands end up on Link’s ass but he thinks it’s probably around then.

“Hey,” Rhett answers belatedly, once that breaks, too, and one of them starts laughing - he doesn’t know who, but the other follows until they’re kissing again, and then Rhett’s toeing his boot back off, following Link when Link starts backing down the hall, tugging Rhett with him. It’s the first door on the right - maybe the left - Rhett doesn’t give a shit, he just knows there’s a bed and that’s what Link’s pulling him down onto. Link’s mouth is on his neck, and Rhett lets it go for a minute before he gets his hand in Link’s hair to pull his head back and return the favor like they’re sixteen and in the back of the dollar movie theater on a Wednesday night.

Rhett’s never thought he cared much for kissing, but maybe it’s just kissing Link that does it - his whole body feels electric, his fingertips feel like they’re buzzing where they’re touching Link’s shirt and hair and skin. _Rhett,_ Link says once, when Rhett slides his hand up from Link’s hip to rest on his side under his shirt, and Rhett’s about to ask if that was too much when he realizes Link’s undoing the buttons on his shirt.

“Fuck,” Rhett says eloquently, busies himself with Link’s neck while Link struggles with the last portion of buttons, then gives up and undoes them himself, pretends not to notice busting the last one off altogether. Link might, but if he does, he probably forgets; Rhett’s hands are all over him, mapping out the hardness of his collarbones and the dusting of hair down his belly and the flat pane between his hips.

“You’re wearin’ too many clothes,” Link says, tugs at the neck of Rhett’s shirt, and Rhett about knocks him out with his elbow when he moves to strip it off but everything ends up alright - Link bites his bare shoulder, not gently, and Rhett cusses him for his good memory and tugs at his hair in retaliation, grins at the little noise he gets in return.

He isn’t sure who made the first move towards _really_ undressing. His brain’s not working too good, between the couple of drinks at the bar and then Link existing as a whole, but he knows after a while that his belt’s open and so are Link’s button and fly, and he’s pretty sure he could hammer a goddamn nail so surely Link’s in the same predicament, so when he mumbles _can I?_ he means _can I shove my hand down your pants,_ or _can I blow you,_ or any number of things, but Link doesn’t even ask for clarification, just pants _yes_ and tilts his hips upwards, and Rhett’s pretty sure he could die a happy man right about then.

“God,” he says, and kisses Link again, and Link’s moan is mostly into his mouth when Rhett gets his pants and boxers down around his thighs and a hand around him but the noise he makes after that isn’t. Link drives his head into his pillow, bites his bottom lip, hard - “Rhett,” he says, “Rhett, God,” and Rhett kisses him again, easy, has to think for a second, runs his thumb over the head once, twice, listens to Link’s breath catch in his throat.

“You’re so pretty,” he says, mostly into Link’s neck. “I ever tell you how pretty you are?”

“Shut up,” Link says, which is probably fair, and then says “c’mere, kiss me,” which is _more_ than fair, and then breaks that kiss halfway through to say “oh - hey, your pants are on,” and Rhett’s never laughed with another man’s dick in his hand but there’s a first time for everything, he figures.

“They are,” he says, and manages to pop the button open with one hand but has to stop and use both to get the zipper undone. Link does the rest, shoves everything down just enough to get it out of the way, and Rhett’s still not expecting it, somehow, when Link gets both hands around him.

“Ridiculous,” Link says, kisses him sweet and easy on the mouth to take any sting out of it, and Rhett grins a little but can’t laugh, too focused on trying to make Link feel that good, too.

They don’t - can’t - talk much after that, mouths too busy on each other - Link bites him again and Rhett leaves a hickey blossoming under his collarbone for it, another under his jaw when Link bites back a whine during the first - Rhett latches onto that noise and chases it, demands to hear it in full, and he gets it when Link comes hot over his hand, thighs shaking, one calf wrapped around Rhett’s shins to pull him in close.

“I wanna,” Link starts, a few moments later, kisses his way from Rhett’s neck down to his chest with the clear intention of continuing more southerly, but Rhett mumbles _no, hey - stay up here_ and he does, makes his way back up. They’re only half kissing, part of the time just breathing in each other’s air.

“Hey,” Rhett says - they’d been kissing, Link’s teeth in his lip - bites back a moan, and then Link says _you gonna come?_ and hearing that in Link’s voice makes it impossible to bite back the next. He doesn’t need to say yes; if Link remembers to bite him, he remembers what it sounds like when Rhett’s gonna come.

He’s right - Link does - works him through it until he’s spent, and then Link peppers kisses up and down his neck until they can both breathe again. It’s quiet - suddenly - and Link eases back a little from where he’d been practically on top of him, like he’s not sure if Rhett wants space.

Rhett follows, doesn’t move but rolls to face Link, kisses the first part he can reach - his shoulder, he thinks, warm and smooth.

“You should stay,” Link says, eventually. Rhett doesn’t know how long it’s been, if he’s been dozing or if he’s been awake the whole time, but he’s awake enough to catch the hint of guardedness in Link’s voice, what might be resignation at the answer he anticipates.

“Yeah,” Rhett says. It takes him a minute, but he sounds certain. He _is_ certain. “I should.”


End file.
